Recently finished building a new game box to replace my AMD 64 Athlon 3000 with ATI 9800 Pro. The Pro really makes Far Cry look good, but it was flakey in newer games like CoD2. New box is AMD 64 Athlon 3700 with nVidia 7900. I first set up Far Cry video settings on all Very High like I had been running the 9800. That did not work at all. The Very High settings auto-triggered HDR on the 7900, and the colors went nuts. I started dropping the settings down to see if I could fix the auto-trigger of HDR, and I finally stumbled on it. Far Cry has never looked so good. I now have deep colors with very advanced shadowing. Frame rates in the 90s. And the AI seems more advanced. I'm getting new attacks from AI that I've never seen before. Seems the top performance settings for the 7900 are: All video to HIGH. AA OFF. TRILINEAR. IA 1. These settings seem to give me the most detail in the walls, plants, trees, sand that I have ever seen. Shading and light is very realistic, and also shows no lag. If I move even one of the video settings to VERY HIGH, I begin to lose this detail, and the frame rate begins to drop. Forgot: my new game monitor is a Viewsonic VX2025wm, so I put the resolution to 1280 x 800. That means I can turn AA OFF, and still have very smooth edges. In addition, I needed to turn the brightness down. That gave deep rich colors on the lcd monitor. I'm really pleased with this new game PC. Bring on Crysis. So maybe I step up to the AMD 64 Athlon X2 4200 ?? It is about $187 right now, and expected to drop even more by November. Vista ? ( just joking )

johns1234

09-09-2006, 06:00 PM

Here's how good it is: Very much smarter AI. Much much better detail in graphics. Stuff I noticed on the way.

.. Training: Mercs in jeep at other end of beach could not be suckered to attack over the hill where I had a jeep with morter ready. They positioned behind sand dunes.
.. Pier: Flowers had great detail. So did bananas. Those purple flowers had multi-colored petals, and were very layered.
.. Treehouse: Mercs behind wall at fort came to the edge of the wall and 3 of them fired at me as I went up the path to the fort with the tower. Also vines .. all vines .. had leaves and were twined strands of different colors
.. Bunker: Mercs at bottom of elevator crouched and waited for me to come out of the hallway. I could not sucker them to attack. One waited down the stairs outside the operating room where the first Fat Boy is seen on the table. One Merc attacked, but when I started getting the better of him, he crouched and retreated while looking back. I had never seen individual behavior "scenes" involving the Mercs. Nothing like that.
.. Steam: NOW I HAVE FROGS !!!!!! There must have been a dozen or more on the path to the steam plant, and they stayed in the game so I could walk over and look at them carefully. One was quite big .. about a foot long, and a different color that the smaller green ones. All were highly detailed.

That is about where I am in the game now ... It is a puzzle that the HIGH only settings give me the best graphics and game play that I have ever seen in this game. My 9800 really made this game look good, and play well, but for some reason I never reached the level that the 7900 is giving me ... on lower settings. Also, with the 9800, I very rarely got frogs. Now I have them plenty, and jumping like mad when I chase them. More to come, I'm sure.

johns1234

09-12-2006, 01:48 AM

Yep. In Cooler, right at the end when you go into the room with Val, there has always been a problem with trying to open the door twice. I don't know of anybody else who has been able to do this. I went in the door and tossed grenades at the trigens, but they got past them and attacked Val who ran in front of me and pushed me back through the door. The door
closed while she was fighting them. Ordinarily, the trigens get Val, and you can't get the door to open again. I was
able to open the door twice, and the 2nd time I went in with the SMG50 and joined Val in the fight. We got them and that triggered the cut scene with the clock on the wall.
In Factory, I push the heavy crates down the floor to block the doorways so the Mercs can't come in. Usually it takes quite a while to push those crates down the hallway. Now, the crates move at a somewhat faster pace, and take about half the time. This, I don't understand. Also, I was never able to move the very small cases on the floor. Now, I can move them as well as the big light case, and the heavy case.
In Volcano, two Fat Boys came up on the porch to get me. I was hiding behind the edge of the doorway, but I could see them since they walked past the entire doorway, and then turned to see who was shooting from the direction of the big antenna. I'm sure it was a Jumper. They got ticked at the Jumper, and left the porch and went after him.
In all levels, I think hit detection improved.
In Dam, I jump the jeep and bail and run to the top of the hill overlooking the entrance to the Volcano. Ordinarily, the Mercs come head on at me. Now, they flank me and come over the edge of the hill to both sides of me. Also, I had much better driving control of the jeep. When I jumped the lava to the road with the Mercs in another jeep, I was able to turn quickly towards them, and then go left and jump the hill into the bushes overlooking the entrance. Much easier and quicker, but the Mercs flanking me made the level a lot harder.